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Then he further transgressed by refusing to be silent when he was suspended. He criticized the school board, the process, and the people behind his suspension.
It is quite likely that McMurtry would have a job today if he agreed to be muzzled, if he abrogated his right to free speech and if he had followed orders. Because his failure to do those three things is getting him canned.
The conclusion to a report that recommends his sacking is sparse, definitive, and chilling in its implications.
“Given Mr. McMurtry’s assertions that he will not be ‘muzzled,’ that he has a democratic right to speak, that he will not follow directions, it is clear that Mr. McMurtry’s employment can no longer continue,” says the conclusion.
And there you have it: If only he had followed orders and shut up.
The long and rocky road that led to McMurtry’s dismissal hearing began in 2021 during a Grade 12 classroom discussion in Abbotsford, B.C., concerning the just announced news of 215 unmarked graves at Kamloops Indian Residential School.
A student said priests had murdered and tortured the children at the school and then left them to die in the snow. McMurtry pointed out that most children at residential schools died from disease, primarily tuberculosis.
“I wasn’t trying to be inflammatory,” said McMurtry in an interview. “It was one comment. It was not done with callousness.”
It took one complaint, and before the hour was out McMurtry was being frog-marched out of the school.
It is a horrifying and appalling fact that a large number of residential school children died from TB in overcrowded, unsanitary conditions and without basic medical care. However, the Abbotsford District School Board would have us hide this disgrace not out of shame — which would at least be understandable — but in the name of some “truth,” which is incomprehensible.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission highlights that this deplorable situation was well known, quoting documents in the National Archives of Canada that said: “As many as half of the aboriginal children who attended the early years of residential schools died of tuberculosis, despite repeated warnings to the federal Government that overcrowding, poor sanitation and a lack of medical care were creating a toxic breeding ground for the rapid spread of the disease.”
The TRC’s historical documentation is a damning indictment of Canada’s treatment of students at residential schools. However, it does not record any lurid stories of murder or torture.
Children in the schools died at a far higher rate than school-aged children in the general population, due largely to high rates of disease, particularly tuberculosis.
“Failure to establish and enforce adequate standards, coupled with the failure to adequately fund the schools, resulted in unnecessarily high death rates at residential schools,” reads the TRC’s Missing Children and Unmarked Burials report.
There were also accidental deaths from drowning or exposure, and the buildings themselves were often fire traps (19 boys died in a fire that destroyed the Beauval, Saskatchewan, school in 1927.) Students who died were often buried in graves at the school instead of the body being sent home.
One would hope that this truth would be taught in every school. But that’s not the truth the Abbotsford District School Board cares about.
The board’s report said, “Mr. McMurtry’s personal opinions regarding residential schools were seen in contradiction to the truth and reconciliation work that is currently underway in the District.”
Apparently, McMurtry’s truth, backed by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, isn’t good enough for the school district who have another, different truth.
One can almost hear the school district quoting Pontius Pilate: “What is truth?”
McMurtry was suspended and then, over a year later, had the audacity to speak out about the unfairness of it all.
This, of course, got him in more trouble. Now he’s accused of “flagrant disregard” for his employer. The impact of his comments on students could be “unethical and immoral,” claimed the school district.
If only he had followed the expected “lines of communication,” as was demanded of him, he might still have a job.
But what does McMurtry know? He only holds a master’s degree in the history of education and a doctorate in the philosophy of education with a specialty in Indigenous history.
“I’m a Canadian,” McMurtry said in the interview. “I’ve a right to freedom of conscience. I don’t understand any of this. How can they do this to me?”
McMurtry said “woke dogma” was dominant in schools and needed to be challenged.
“This woke indoctrination (is) as offensive as any totalitarian ideology that has ever been pushed. People use ideologies to further their own interests, this isn’t new. What is striking is that in schools they are presenting only one side.
“There’s people who believe that Canada is systemically racist and that all our ancestors were monsters. And I’m the person who is saying, ‘Well, let’s debate it. Let’s look at it.’
“Teachers are walking on eggshells on all sorts of issues. Teachers need to stop now and say, ‘Enough is enough’.”
McMurtry said he was concerned that NDP MP Leah Gazan recently announced that she wanted legislation that might target people like him.
“Now the NDP wants to have people like me labelled as denialists and guilty of hate speech,” he said.
The report into his conduct recommended that he be “terminated for just and reasonable cause.” But his firing is neither just nor reasonable.
And that’s the truth.
National Post
